No fewer than 16 mainly feeble governments, military or civilian, held office between 1964 and 1983.
The campaign in 2011 to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya, although successful in its immediate aims, exposed both divisions within the alliance and gaps in capability that fed America's frustration with feeble European military spending.
Iran has been taking a crucial role in opposing and fighting Isis, especially in Iraq where Iranian-backed Shiia militias have in some instances supplanted a feeble Iraqi military.
In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, for instance, Washington is considering sending about 200 Special Forces soldiers and more than $50 million in equipment to aid the feeble Georgian military, which has been unable to establish control over the Pankisi Gorge near Chechnya.
It is much sexier to sell Congress on injecting useless billions to bolster a feeble, incapable military that has lost every war it has ever fought than, say, printing millions of Pashtu language school books and training an army of Pashtun teachers.
But the civilian casualties that have accompanied the attacks have accelerated anti-American feelings and made the Pakistani military appear feeble, they said.
Its military muscle remains feeble.
The first episode covers the period from 1974 to the early 1980s, encompassing the last 2 years of a democratic government and the whole dictatorial military regime.16 Weak labor institutions, feeble unions, a sweeping trade liberalization reform, and sharp overall increase in inequality characterize this episode.
